“How long will it take?”
“We can do a session now. Might need another. I’m a doctor, not a magician, but I’m pretty good at this.”
“Darla said something about dancing like a chicken one day of the week, and barking like a dog another.”
“She stole my joke. I tell that because people think things like that about being hypnotized and I want them to know it’s silly. But I do need to warn you, sometimes going deep reveals uncomfortable memories unrelated to smoking. Things you might not want to explore.”
“I haven’t got any skeletons in my closet,” Johnny said. “Good family. Good life. No problems.”
“Most of us have at least a few bones, some we may have forgotten about. I mention this because the method I use, well, it’s truly deep hypnosis. Deeper than the sort I received. I’ve perfected it over the years. It involves a mild sedative of sorts. It’s a drug made from rare herbs. Not widely known, and not everyone in the medical community adheres to it or respects it.”
“But it’s safe?”
“Yes. I had one client that found they were digging deeper into memories they would rather not have recalled, but that’s been the worst of it.”
“Maybe we should talk price?”
“Trust me,” Dr. Anderson said, “I’m affordable. Now, settle in the chair, close your eyes, and…”
* * *
Incense was lit and placed in a little ceramic elephant incense burner and pushed close to Johnny. It smelled like sewage, but at the same time it was very relaxing.
“The drug is in the incense,” Dr. Anderson said. “Take a deep breath.”
There wasn’t much to it, and the session was about an hour, and he felt he had slept through most of it. The price was indeed reasonable, but when Johnny left the office he had the similar feeling he had after leaving a carnival palm reader.
Johnny drove home, and then went for his run. As he trotted up Dark Hill, which was named that because in the old days it had been a place for public hangings, he slowed as he reached the summit of the sidewalk, crossed over and entered the edge of the park. Beyond was a great lake. Cool air was blowing off of it. He stood on the rise of the hill and felt its full gusty force. The night had come down, and on the other side of the great lake were more tall buildings suddenly ablaze with what appeared to be a fog of brilliant lights; red, blue and yellow.
The hanging tree had been a massive oak, and it had grown where a Starbucks now stood. There was a plaque on the wall of the Starbucks that told all about it. He had read it several times in the past. In one of the local guide books he had seen photos of the hanging tree, which had lived until the mid-nineteen hundreds. Rumor was it had been poisoned so as to eliminate resistance to future construction.
The park was across the street from the Starbucks, like an island in a sea of sounds and hustling humanity, and there was a large oak amongst smaller trees, not the original hanging oak, but many thought it was, for it was old and large. Some of the guide books even pointed it out as the famous tree.
Before you reached the Starbucks there was a row of hedges, and then a wide alley. Johnny had almost learned the hard way the alley was an exit for a famous bakery.
Delivery trucks came through there regularly, and one of them had nearly wiped him out on several occasions. It had come upon him swift and silent and it was only by accident that he had noticed it in time. Next time out he had forgotten all about it, was concentrating on the evenness of his run, when it happened again. The truck had slammed on its brakes, the front of it almost touching him. He had nearly crapped a shit-shaped Jesus. The driver paused long enough to roll down his window and yell at him, even though it was the driver who was in the wrong.
Both times the near accident happened dead on six p.m.; probably the bakery’s last run for the day, and almost his last run for all eternity. From that point on when he came to the edge of the hedge, which was always about six p.m., he slowed and checked before moving across the alley mouth. That truck was always on time and the driver was always in a hurry, and so it was a wise decision to be careful.
As he ran, he looked at his watch. He was five minutes ahead of his usual time, and when he checked, no truck. He kept running up the hill, and then he crossed at the crosswalk and started back down on the opposite side.
On his way down the hill, running swiftly, he realized something. He hadn’t even thought about a cigarette.
* * *
At home he took a carton of cigarettes, as well as the two packs by his nightstand, the ashtrays, bagged them up and took them out and put them in the garbage. He wondered if come midnight he’d be rooting around in that can like a raccoon, in need of a smoke.
But it didn’t happen.
He went to bed that night and slept well, and in the morning when he had his coffee, which was also when he had his first smoke of the day, he realized he didn’t have the urge. After a couple weeks went by he didn’t think of smoking at all, not even during his breaks at work.
However, there had been something after his first few nights of good sleep and no need for nicotine. He found himself waking up to pee, or at least that was it at first, but in time he realized something else was causing him to wake up.
He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but it seemed to him that it had to be something he was thinking about in his sleep, something he was dreaming. He’d thought at first it was his long to-do list hanging over him. Making copies for work he had forgotten, reading the stack of manuscripts on his nightstand, the upcoming meeting that usually ended in more work being thrust upon him and no mention of higher pay.
But one night, after waking up with tears streaming down his face, he understood it was something more.
Rolling out of bed, he made his way to the kitchen, opened the door to the refrigerator and pulled out a pitcher of water. Very much awake now, he placed the pitcher on the counter and fumbled through the cabinets for a glass. He was shaking, cold, but not from the temperature.
He stood for a moment, collecting himself. Breathing the same way he might after one of his hard runs.
After a few minutes, his heart rate slowed and he began to calm down. He reached for the glass of water, drank it down in one gulp, and returned to bed and slept soundly.
After work, as usual, Johnny slipped on his running shoes, grabbed his keys, and headed out for his run, jogging into the descending dark. Today the weather had improved and the cool air that kissed his skin the day before was nothing but damp heat. His face was pink from exertion, but he liked the way the sun felt against his body.
He rarely stopped on his run, but today, on his way back, he paused at the false hanging tree, pulled the drinking bottle from its holster on his hip, and sipped at the well-lit park.
When he turned his attention to the tree, he could see clearly by the safety lights in the park. He saw a thick trail of ants marching up the tree. After watching them for a moment, for a reason unbeknown to him, he pressed his palm into the leading troops, smashing them, feeling the little pops of the ants beneath his hand, and then his wrist and lower arm began to burn. Lightly at first, and then with an intensity so severe he wished he could remove it and beat the offending ants to death with it. The living ants had attacked their attacker.
Johnny yanked back his arm and shook it, brushing it off with the opposite hand and wondering why he had done what he did. They were ants, not humans, but there hadn’t been any need to do such a thing. It wasn’t like him. And that was when he first realized he was nursing some deep anxiety that frightened and frustrated him and manifested itself in something as simple as ant murder.
Something was loose inside his head.
* * *
Johnny sat down on Dr. Anderson’s worn couch, said, “Something’s happening, Doctor. I’m having trouble sleeping. Bad dreams.”
“You just quit smoking. Restlessness could be a side-result. I warned you, you quit one thing, another replaces it, but you should be sleeping wel
l pretty soon. Most things are easier to beat than nicotine. Even cocaine is said to be easier to beat than nicotine addiction, and beating any drug, including nicotine, could result in withdrawal symptoms, even bad dreams.”
“It’s more than that,” Johnny said, sinking deeper into the corner of the couch. “Can you completely forget something, and then suddenly remember it? I don’t mean a little thing, but a big thing, a series of events?”
“Depends on the circumstances, how old you were when it happened, how traumatic it was, how much you wanted to forget. Why don’t you tell me about it?”
“You are bound by law to keep things secret, right?” Johnny said.
“If you tell me you have plans to blow up a building or murder someone, I’m not bound by law or ethics.”
“What if it was in the past? When I was a child?”
“Stretch out on the couch, relax, close your eyes, find your center, and then tell me about it.”
Johnny closed his eyes, and as the doctor suggested, he tried to find his center. Somewhere in the back of his mind he heard a sound like a door opening, and then it was as if a cold wind blew across his brain. The door slammed, something moved amongst the shadows of his mind, and then he began to talk.
“When I was fifteen I killed someone. I don’t mean I pulled a gun on them or cut their throat or beat them to death, anything like that, but I think it was my deep-seated intention to kill them, and in a way I did.”
Anderson leaned back in his chair. “Okay. Let’s decide together. Keep talking.”
“I had forgotten it until the other night. Oh, now and again, I’d feel a bit of something, a memory, but I swear to you, I didn’t truly remember it. It was as if it had never happened, until after you hypnotized me.”
“It’s called suppression. It’s even possible it’s a false memory.”
Johnny shook his head. “No. It’s not a false memory. I grew up in a small southern town, and there was this kid, Ronnie. He was older, maybe sixteen or seventeen. Had been held back in school a couple times, and he’s the reason I’m a runner. Health, sure, but he’s the real reason. It’s so clear to me now. I can’t believe I forgot it—”
“Suppressed it. Just tell me, Johnny.”
* * *
Long before Dark Hill Run there was Swamp Road, where he practiced running in his old home town. It was a shortcut not far from the school, a twisting path through the woods with swamp water glimmering between the trunks of the trees. He ran home through there because it was a quicker path than going around the woods, walking through a residential area. And another reason he ran there was Ronnie Fischer.
Ronnie was his nemesis. Since the eighth grade the guy had it in for him. Ronnie pretty much hated everyone. Word was he was beat at home and had become a fuck toy for his older brother who was even meaner.
Shit rolled downhill, and rumor was, before he set his sights on Johnny, he had poured gasoline over the family cat, set it on fire, swung it by its tail, blazing into a pit of charred cans and family garbage.
Johnny didn’t care about his reasons, why he had become what he had become. He cared that every day in the halls, and after school, Ronnie was waiting for him, greasy as if his head had been used to mop out toilet bowls, his leather jacket worn thin at the elbows and around the collar. Ronnie had been wearing that jacket for two years now, summer and winter, always a thin tee-shirt under it; wore jeans and sneakers and a sour expression along with it, and always had a toothpick between his lips. And though he hated everyone, for whatever reason, he had chosen Johnny as his main focus. Ronnie looked across the classroom one day, and his eyes fell on Johnny like bricks, and from then on tormenting Johnny was his main purpose in life.
Sometimes it was taunts, but most of the time, in the halls, it was shoving, a short punch to the shoulder, and then outside of school, when classes were done, he chased Johnny.
Johnny told his father about it, and his father gave him advice. Stand up to him, son. You don’t, it’ll get worse.
So Johnny stood up to him. It was a short and painful experience. He was knocked down behind the gym, kicked, and then Ronnie jumped on top of him and pounded him, and then, as he stood up, tired and bored from beating Johnny, he spat on him. As Johnny told Dr. Anderson about it, he could feel the warm spit running down his forehead.
That was it for standing up to the bully. From that point on, he ran.
Every goddamn day, he ran. And that was one thing he was good at, and now that it was all coming back to him, the fact he had been so good in track he not only owed to his coach and his training, but to Ronnie. That bastard was a frightful incentive. Johnny could always outrun him, but just by a bit. He could hear Ronnie breathing behind him, and once, when he looked back over his shoulder, Ronnie was almost on him, reaching, about to grab him. Johnny put on a burst of speed and left him staggering behind. From then on, it was as if he had been given a jet-propelled ass, because he learned in that moment he could really pour it on when he had to. It was his only defense against Ronnie.
In time it got a little better. His and Ronnie’s classes didn’t match up the same way as the years went on, so there were fewer encounters in the halls. Ronnie was on the other side of the building, in wood shop, building a crooked bird house, or in metal class, making a chisel or some such, preparing for his career as an asshole. But still, after school, it was the same. Johnny prayed for the day he would have his driver’s license and a car. That could change things.
But things changed well before the time Johnny got his license.
The memory washed in on Johnny as he talked, like a tide bringing in debris. He remembered it clearly. It was the last day of school, and he had slipped out a side door and started for home. Ronnie wasn’t waiting for a change. Johnny was well ahead of him, running toward Swamp Road, his books shuffling about in his backpack as he ran.
He could hardly believe his fortune. The last day of school and the bastard had been too slow, or hadn’t bothered to come to school. And why should he? He’d pretty soon be out in the world without even a G.E.D., looking for a job hosing down grease and oil at a filling station.
And then, Johnny saw him. He was coming out of the woods. Might have gotten out of school early or skipped for just this moment; a last day of school pounding. Had hidden out, waiting to cut Johnny off at the pass, so to speak.
Johnny broke off the road and started through the woods, splashing through the shallow water. And then he saw a rise of clay and trees. Johnny scrambled up that, and Ronnie grabbed his ankle as he did, the weight of the pack on Johnny’s back almost pulling him back into the fiend’s grasp.
Johnny was barely able to shake his foot loose, scuttle to the summit of the hill. When he stood up and moved forward a few feet he came to a thirty-foot drop through scraggly pines, and down below to a major highway. Cars and trucks whistled and moaned along, riding on a ribbon of concrete cut through the hill.
Johnny turned. He was trapped with his back against a pine, the drop and the highway behind him, and in front of him, Ronnie, scrambling up the rise.
Ronnie stood and looked at him. Johnny could now remember his smile. Like a wolf that’s cornered a rabbit in its den, the fangs wet with anticipation. Ronnie turned his head and studied him, and then his head nodded back into position, and he came on slowly, that wolf-grin widening.
“Step by step,” Ronnie said.
Johnny put his fists up the way he thought a boxer might. Ronnie laughed, and rushed him, and in that moment Johnny saw something in Ronnie’s face that sent chills down his spine. Ronnie had crossed over from being a bully and abuser, to being a killer. Murder blazed in Ronnie’s eyes like hot coals in a furnace. Today Ronnie had made the decision, and Johnny knew it as surely as you could feel a change in the weather. Ronnie planned to finish their daily race forever, something he probably could have done at any time. Johnny had replaced that poor cat as an outlet for Ronnie’s anger. He understood that now.
As Ronni
e charged him, Johnny’s will to fight failed; he knew how that would turn out. He screamed and cowered, dropped into a little ball at the base of the tree, and—
Ronnie tripped over him, the inertia of his speed sent him flying forward. His punch meeting nothing but air as his foot caught on Johnny’s backpack. It had been so quick and unexpected that Ronnie tumbled over Johnny’s back and went down the hill, and Johnny was knocked after him.
Johnny grabbed at a root jutting out of the clay, clung to it, but Ronnie, he had been launched too far out to grab anything.
Johnny turned and looked down as Ronnie smashed through pine boughs and hit the highway on his head, a one point landing, and then a semi pulling a long trailer full of cattle blared its horn, and the big truck hit Ronnie. There was screeching and smoking tires and a sound like someone dropping a hog carcass out of a helicopter.
There was an explosion of blood and Johnny saw Ronnie’s head flying off toward the side of the road like a lost basketball rebound. Johnny was so shaken, he almost let go of the pine root, but instead managed to grab another root, and then another, and reach the summit of the hill, and—
After that he remembered nothing. Somehow he wandered home and took a shower and did what he always did, felt odd and tired, and nothing more.
Next day he heard that Ronnie had died. He was secretly glad of that, remembering the bullying and what an asshole Ronnie was. But he realized now that he had actually disassociated himself from the events moments after, had put up a wall between himself and the memory; a memory that he felt scratching at the back of his mind from time to time, but nothing he could understand or relate to, until the other night when he heard that door open and slam.
When he had gone to search for the source of the sound, at the top of the stairs, looking down on him, for a brief moment, he thought he saw the hulking shape of Ronnie, and though the light was dim, he thought he could see cold, flat, black eyes in that shadowed face. Johnny was overcome with childhood fear, and then, the shape was gone, a collapsing shadow among other shadows, and then the memory he had forgotten for so long was suddenly bright and clear and frightening, all the more for having been dredged up from the dark silt of his memory.
Dark Cities Page 18
